Four Europeans lead in race for UN Secretary-General

The plot thickens.
(tags: un )

I’m With The Banned

Passionate, readable account of @PennyRed at the RNC.
(tags: Uspolitics )

Our nine-point guide to spotting a dodgy statistic

Numbers often lie; or the people using them, anyway.
(tags: mathematics statistics politics )

The Stockholm-Helsinki hyperloop pre-feasibility study

500 km in 28 minutes, for a mere 19 billion euro.
(tags: sweden finland travel )

3-Stage Voting (and Other Hugo Award Proposals)

I have signed on to two of these three proposals.
(tags: sf hugos )

Don’t believe your own hype

My old friend Natalie on encouraging dissent as a leader. #fb
(tags: management )

Feast Your Eyes On the First Footage From American Gods!

Hooray!
(tags: sf )

Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy

I wish the Washington Post would say what it really thinks! #fb
(tags: uspolitics )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

These were excellent questions, and Ron Chernow wished that he knew how to answer them. Soon after Lin returned from his vacation to Mexico (having folded down many page-corners in Chernow’s book, having called out many ideas to Vanessa as they popped into his brain), he reached out to the author of the biography that had seized his imagination. A friend’s father supplied Ron’s email address, and Lin invited him to see In the Heights.

Since January, I’ve been thoroughly addicted to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton (based on the Ron Chernow biography). The first song, the title number, grabbed me viscerally as I walked from my hotel to the old town of Dubrovnik one winter afternoon, and has not let go since. I was actually in New York last week, and for a mad moment briefly considered paying hundreds of dollars to get a ticket for the Tuesday evening performance. The fact that I had a breakfast meeting in Washington on Wednesday, and more importantly the confirmed news that Hamilton will come to London in October next year, deterred me, probably for the best.

I got myself the book-of-the-musical as a birthday present, but have only got around to reading it this month. The real book-of-the-musical, of course, is Chernow’s biography, but this is a great insight into how the show came to be the way it was; it includes the lyrics for one first-act song which is in the show but isn’t included in the album, and a couple of others that were dropped – a third cabinet battle about slavery, a longer version of Hamilton’s attack on John Adams. A lot of the notes on specific songs will be familiar to fellow addicts of the annotated lyrics. But the books strength is its stories about how the show came to be written – a couple of the songs squeezed out almost at the last moment, others chopped and changed far beyond their original form – and how the various creators were inspired and implemented their visions for the show, not just Miranda but the many collaborators who brought it to life. It’s a book that will be of little interest to those who are not already fans, but of great interest to those of us who are. Unfortunately my copy was missing the first quire, so I’ll need to find another. It still has almost all the good bits.

Hamilton: The Revolution reached the top of my list as the most popular book in my unread pile by a non-white author (ie Miranda). Next on that list is Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Lying Liars Who Lie

Hillary is truthful; why don’t people think so?
(tags: uspolitics sexandgenderandsexuality )

A Women’s History of Silicon Valley

The women you don’t see.
(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality historyofscience )

Second paragraph of November chapter in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel in Cartoons:

I do feel a little bad, because it looked like it was gonna take a long tin to clean up. But on the bright side, Gramma is retired, so she probably didn’t have anything planned for today anyway.

Second paragraph of November chapter in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules:

Rodrick was upstairs in my room bugging me, and Dad went into the bathroom. A couple seconds later, he said something that made Rodrick stop cold.

Young F was really into these books a few years ago, and I finally sampled the first two in the series. They’re entertaining but not great literature; Greg is disarmingly innocent, and occasionally tells more than he realises; the story of school friendships and family relationships being tested by events is one that will never really get old, and the pictures do illustrate the story nicely. But girls are rather absent from the narrative, and non-white kids barely visble. So I feel I can skip the other nine volumes we have in our house and not feel I’ve missed much.

I picked up the first two volumes because a later one (which I did not read) had somehow got to the top of my list of unread books acquired in 2013. Next on that list, in rather a swerve, is the Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe.

Brexit Blues

John “Londonista” Lanchester is in despair.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Clinton’s Lead Is As Safe As Kerry’s Was In 2004

*gulp*
(tags: uspolitics )

‘Walking Dead’ Creator Adapting ‘Chronicles of Amber’ for TV

OMG! I don’t know whether to be delighted or terrified!
(tags: sf )

I’m not deeply invested in the fortunes of Britain’s Labour Party. (I accidentally rejoined the Lib Dems last year, but haven’t paid any subscription this year so possibly am no longer a member.) But I am very interested in questions of political leadership, and in the quality of democracy in a political system.

In this context, I found very interesting three pieces published online in the last week by Labour Party activists (none of whom I had ever heard of before, which must show my disconnect from UK politics). Two of them are women MPs of about the same age as me, Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) and Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South). The third is the somewhat older Richard Murphy, part-time Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University London. They all made similar criticisms of the leadership style of Jeremy Corbyn, sufficient to convince me that the Labour Party will make a huge mistake if it fails to remove him as its leader.

To take it from the top. Thangam Debbonaire tells a grim story of a botched appointment to shadow culture policy, followed by lack of communication from the leader, followed by hassle on social media from Corbyn supporters when she was ill, followed by her disillusionment with Corbyn’s post-referendum stance on Brexit and his reluctance to talk about winning elections. It’s got a lot of coverage, but actually it’s the weakest of the three – in some ways the most telling, though; there is crucially no mention of Corbyn commiserating with her on her illness. A good leader ensures that the foot-soldiers remain loyal to the ranks, even those who might have liked a different general.

Also a former shadow minister, though on transport rather than culture, Lilian Greenwood recounts three crucial moments of betrayal by her own leader. One was perhaps just about excusable – a long-planned policy announcement knocked off the media agenda by a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. Of course the Shadow Cabinet gets reshuffled from time to time, but there are elements of sequencing which a wise leader would respect. The other two, however, are cases of Corbyn actually contradicting, on personal whim, careful policy positions worked out by Greewood with full participation of his own staff. For Greenwood also, Corbyn’s post-referendum stance on Brexit was the final straw – after several betrayals on the issues she somewhat wonkishly cared about. I am a wonk myself. I accept that sometimes our feelings get ruffled. But when our expert advice is not only given, but sought, and then over-ruled without explanation, we wonks get upset. And a good leader does not upset the wonks without telling us why.

Most damningly of all, Richard Murphy reports how his economic ideas were adopted by Corbyn for the leadership election, and then simply abandoned. The killer passage for me was this:

The leadership wasn’t confusing as much as just silent. There was no policy direction, no messaging, no direction, no co-ordination, no nothing. Shadow ministers appeared to have been left with no direction as to what to do. It was shambolic. The leadership usually couldn’t even get a press release out on time to meet print media deadlines and then complained they got no coverage.

This to me is really serious. Murphy’s disillusionment is perhaps all the more powerful because he did not hold any official position in the party. A good leader doesn’t just spout ideas to sound clever during the leadership election, a good leader takes steps to push them forward as a key theme of their leadership.

This all goes some way to explaining the extraordinary 80% vote of no confidence in Corbyn’s leadership from the people who work most closely with him and who would theoretically populate a Corbyn-led government. It’s not convincing to argue that the parliamentary party was against him from the start. As leader of a parliamentary party with a membership of more than, say, three, you have massive tools of persuasion and patronage at your disposal to engender loyalty where previously there might have been none. But Corbyn has not decided to play the game by different rules; he has chosen not to play it at all, preferring to sit on the sidelines. As Alexander Hamilton sings in the musical,

you don’t get a win unless you play in the game
Oh, you get love for it. You get hate for it
You get nothing if you
Wait for it, wait for it!

Of course, if you’re not actually interested in winning, it doesn’t matter. But this apathy is having real consequences. The Conservative government has a wafer-thin majority and has just had one of the most bizarre and bruising leadership contests in living memory. A competent opposition leader would be snapping at their heels and making their lives utterly miserable. On 20 July 2011, the despised Ed Miliband’s Labour Party sat at 44% in the polls. Today Corbyn’s Labour Party is at 29%. As Martin McGrath commented on Twitter, if his project is to replicate the “success” of movements like Syriza (polling 23% in Greece) and Podemos (21% in Spain), he’s nearly there. This is no help whatsoever to the people Labour normally claims to represent or, if you like, lead.

If the UK is to have a coherent opposition which actually holds the government to account, Labour is going to have to find a leader who is actually interested in leading. The introduction of leadership elections by members only, at the same time as broadening the membership base rather dramatically, has made this much more difficult and in fact has enabled a fatal disconnect between the membership and the elected representatives. The process of resolving this disconnect is going to be very messy indeed, with many stupid and reprehensible things done on both sides. But it is an urgently needed catharsis.

NB I’ve said very little about the actual content of policy here. I don’t regard analysing policy debates within a party that is stuck in opposition as a terrific use of my time. My argument is entirely about the execution of the policy decisions that are made, and even more so about leadership of a team to deliver those decisions. That’s where I see Corbyn failing worst, and unforgiveably so.

The Tamir Rice Story: How to Make a Police Shooting Disappear

A grim read.
(tags: guns race uspolitics )

Obama sent these people home from prison early. Now what?

Very moving.
(tags: uspolitics crime )

The Discontented

And an economic remedy. Long but worthwhile read. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics elections economics uspolitics )

A Split-Screen Tour of Los Angeles, Seventy Years Ago and Today

Fascinating. I think I saw *one* building that had not changed.
(tags: usa history films )

How Melania Trump’s Speech Veered Off Course and Caused an Uproar

Jaw-dropping.
(tags: uspolitics )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Today, these accelerators are obsolete—their mega-electron volt energies long surpassed by giga-electron volt particle colliders. They’re no longer winning Nobel prizes, but physicists and graduate students still wait six months for time on an accelerator beamline. After all, our accelerators are fine for studying exotic nuclear particles and searching out new forms of matter, with esoteric names like quark-gluon plasmas or pion condensates. And when the physicists aren’t using them, the beams are used for biomedical research, including cancer therapy.

The 1980s were more innocent times than ours. This is the first-person account of how Stoll, an astrophysics graduate turned sysadmin at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, spotted unauthorised access to the departmental VAX one day in 1986 and set off on a detective trail that eventually led to Cold War hacking and espionage. One has to admire his forensic attention to detail, in the face of apathy from the USA’s own intelligence and security services and the constant threat of being told to get on with his day job by his bosses; but it’s also extraordinary to reflect on how things have changed, in that there would be no difficulty now in getting a government agency to pay attention to hacking on this scale; there would be no legal difficulty in bringing a prosecution; the technical tools to track down hackers are much better developed; and the big international threat to cybersecurity is not in Russia but further east. Still, it’s a great book.

We actually came across it because Stoll’s day job now is to make Klein bottles, and we got young F a woolly one for Christmas. But a little further investigation turned up this book which also looked like a good bet; and indeed it was.

This came to the top of three of my lists simultaneously: the most popular unread book on my shelves acquired in 2015, the most popular non-fiction book on my shelves, and the top recommendation from you guys. Next respectively in those sequences are Tales from the Secret Annexe, by Anne Frank; Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, by Svetlana Alexievich; and Tove Jansson: Work and Love, by Tuula Karjalainen.

The 2016 Hugo Awards: Two Weeks Out

Abigail reminds us to vote.
(tags: sf hugos )

A brief analysis of Labour’s NEC Candidates

Duncan counts the words. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics )

How the UK halved its teenage pregnancy rate

Fascinating and encouraging. #fb
(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality ukpolitics )

How technology disrupted the truth

A long but important piece about post-fact discourse. #fb
(tags: socialmedia media internet )

Britain’s limited options

More on the difficulty of post-Brexit trade agreements.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Night Moves

All about darkness.
(tags: astronomy )

Second stanza of the poem that is the third chapter (‘In the TARDIS: Christmas Day’ by Val Douglas):

`We must have a Christmas pudding,’
The Doctor said at last
As he searched through all the cupboards
For relics of Christmas past.
`Aha!’ he cried in triumph
And held up a mouldy goo.
`A present from Mrs Beeton
`In eighteen umpty-two.’

These themed anthologies of Who stories are sometimes more miss than hit, and I fear this is largely in the former category – perhaps not helped by my reading it at the height of summer rather than in the Christmas season for which it was intended when published in 2004, with New Who looming round the corner. Perhaps appropriately, the two stories I enjoyed most are reflexive vignettes where the TV show becomes part of the narrative, “Christmas Special” by Marc Platt and even more so “All Our Christmases” by Steve Lyons. Otherwise I think this is best enjoyed with mulled win in one’s hand and a seasonal mood in one’s brain.

Nest in sequence: Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins, ed. David Bailey.

How Jimmy Carter saved the space shuttle

And why.
(tags: uspolitics space )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

It was a good thing, Fanny told a correspondent in England, that she had avoided reading Mrs. Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans. The subject was always cropping up in conversation, and when asked for an opinion, she could truthfully say she knew nothing of the lady or her obnoxious book. Some of Fanny’s first impressions, however, coincided with those of America’s most strident critic to date. It had been a traumatic experience for Mrs. Trollope to enter an American milliner’s shop and have someone introduce her to the milliner. Fanny, being, as she later said, an “English republican”, also noted the lack of class distinction in the New World, but without a sense of outrage. Intrusions upon privacy, mosquitoes, heat, and public dining-rooms where one was forced to masticate, cheek by jowl, with total strangers, were much more trying. Friendliness amounted almost to a vice. The Kembles had brought many letters of introduction with them, and shortly after their arrival on September 4, 1832, they were invited to dine with Mr. Philip Hone, former mayor of New York, a retired commission merchant, whose house, facing City Hall Park, was a meeting place for artists and writers of the conservative stripe.

For some years now, I have been fascinated by the nineteenth-century actress and writer Fanny Kemble, and I’m still waiting for someone to write a good comprehensive biography of her. (Maybe me, in fifteen years when I retire.) This book, published in 1972, fills one of the gaps in the more recent biography by Deirdre David in that it concentrates on her relationship with America (the “lovely land” of the title), and with one particular American, Pierce Butler, and with the issue of slavery – in particular, going into how the letters that became the Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-1839 were written, and how they came to be published twenty-five years later. There is lots of good circumstantial detail about antebellum Philadelphia, New York, Washington, and of course the Georgia islands of the Butler plantation. (Incidentally, Pierce Butler’s grandfather, also Pierce Butler, had provided refuge on his island plantation to Aaron Burr in 1804 immediately after the duel in which Alexander Hamilton was killed; in 1736, the same islands were also the American base for Charles Wesley, with his brother John just down the road.) There’s a lot of good comparative stuff about how Kemble’s perceptions of America differed from other contemporary English visitors, contrasting her more touchy-feely approach with the intellectualisation of the likes of Harriet Martineau (they did not get on).

At the same time, there’s a huge elephant in the room which simply isn’t mentioned, and which on reflection I haven’t seen mentioned much in any of the writings on Kemble that I have seen. Quite simply, she was a feminist. Her marriage broke down because she insisted on behaving as her husband’s equal, and Pierce Butler, scion of a Georgian plantation family, simply could not cope with this. Her favourite Shakespeare character was Portia, whose crowning moment is when she assumes a male role and wins (she hated being Juliet, which was the role people always wanted to push her into). The Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation is full of material which could only be written by a feminist abolitionist, and the rest of her career is equally full of commentary on gender politics. Wright is not the only biographer to miss this, but she’s the most political of Kemble’s biographers who I’ve read and it seems therefore particularly lacking here.

My other complaint, and it’s one I’ve made before about Kemble’s biographers, is that she was in general a better writer than those who write about her, so it’s a shame not to hear a bit more of her own voice here – there’s almost an assumption that the reader is already familiar with her writings. She was a complex and fascinating character, and people who knew her either loved her or hated her; and subsequent history has not done her justice.

This came to the top of my pile as the shortest book acquired in 2009 which I had not yet read. Next in order is Oracle, by Ian Watson.

An Ancient Device Too Advanced to Be Real Gives Up Its Secrets at Last

The amazing Antikythera mechanism.
(tags: historyofscience )

Commentary on Brexit

From the London Review of Books. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Nipsa: Tribunal criticises union in ‘communist’ dispute – BBC News

“However the tribunal said they had not shown that the two factions actually have any substantive political differences.

“It added that name-calling or trolling on social media is not sufficient to show political difference nor is “alleged adherence to Trotsky’s 1938 Transitional Program”.”
(tags: politics northernireland )

Posted from Dulles Airport before boarding:

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Lethbridge-Stewart: Beast of Fang Rock, by Andy Frankham-Allan
Galileo's Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Gráinne, by Keith Roberts

Last books finished
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, by Jeff Kinney
The Algebra of Ice, by Lloyd Rose
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
Boy, by Roald Dahl
Dead Romance, by Lawrence Miles
Empire of Mud, by J.D. Dickey
The Secret History of Science Fiction, ed. James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel
Tales from the Secret Annexe, by Anne Frank

Last week’s audios
Torchwood: The Victorian Age, by AK Benedict
Torchwood: Zone 10, by David Llewellyn

Next books
Between structure and No-thing: An annotated reader in Social and Cultural Anthropology, ed. Patrick J. Devlieger
Corona, by Greg Bear
Earthlight, by Arthur C Clarke

Books acquired in last week
Empire of Mud, by J.D. Dickey
A Woman of the Iron People, by Eleanor Arnason
Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Paper Girls, vol 1, by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang
The Dinner, by Herman Koch
Best American Comics 2011, ed. Alison Bechdel
The Autumnlands v1: Tooth and Claw, by Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Dewey
Weapons of Mass Diplomacy, by Lanzac and Blain

Nicholas Whyte discusses the European economy

Me on China’s CCTV.
(tags: mymedia eu ukpolitics )

The May delusion: Britain’s new prime minister will regret appointing Boris Johnson

@economist’s brutal assessment. #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Bronze Age inferno preserved an extraordinary view of life in England 3000 years ago

Fascinating.
(tags: archaeology )

‘Ghostbusters’ Is A Perfect Example Of How Internet Movie Ratings Are Broken

Yep.
(tags: internet films )

New Uncertainty for Lebanese Banks

US anti-money laundering legislation has wider consequences.
(tags: lebanon waronterror )

Everything you need to know about Theresa May’s Brexit nightmare in five minutes

Good summary. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Racist, xenophobic and anti-intellectual: Academics threaten to leave Brexit Britain

But who needs experts anyway?
(tags: eu migration ukpolitics )

Great expectations? Or: the tale of the missing dancing dogs

A lesson in communication.
(tags: work )

So no book reviews for a couple of days.

What Theresa May really thinks – trawl of speeches over 20 years

*Very* interesting.
(tags: ukpolitics )

8 Reasons Why Pokemon GO Is the Greatest Game Ever

Haven’t tried it yet. Am sure I will!
(tags: games )

From Thatcher’s private secretary to yogi

Fascinating. I knew him in the Balkans!
(tags: religion Balkans )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

He held his breath on the final step, and the panic drove him to near unconsciousness. His vision blurred at the edges, closing to a single pinpoint of light, and then … he floated. The all-consuming celestial blue of the horizon hit his visual field an instant after he realized that the thermal updraft had caught him and the wings of the paraglider. Fear was behind him on the mountaintop, and thousands of feet above the resplendent green rain forest and pristine white beaches of Copacabana, Hans Keeling had seen the light.

Ferriss believes that he has found the answer to happiness in life. It is to outsource all the stuff you hate doing in your working day to long-distance personal assistants in developing countries, and then do only the stuff you like for as long as you want to. He reckons that he can have a princely lifestyle with only four hours of actual paid work per week, and that you can too if you follow his advice.

This is one of those evangelical self-help books which is written by a very confident person with very little self-awareness. He admits towards the end that he has resigned from three jobs in his career and been fired from all the rest. This comes as little surprise to the reader; I think it’s clear that Ferriss and office culture are a poor match, and both sides are winners now that he is no longer there.

Perhaps I’m weird, but I actually like my office and my workmates. I enjoy going to a physical location where you can drop by someone else’s desk (and other colleagues drop by mine) to discuss the latest ideas for transforming our collective brainpower into a paid product. My life would actually be poorer in quality if I didn’t have an interesting place to go and earn money every day separate from where I live. It’s not to everyone’s taste, of course, but I think Ferriss doesn’t quite see that his priorities are not universally shared.

Having said that, he has some very good ideas about productivity and personal branding which are relevant no matter what your working circumstances. I nodded with approval at his evangelical endorsement of Evernote, which admitedly I use more for leisure activities than work but which is a really powerful tool. His tips for cheap travel (including travel with children) are also of general relevance.

Still, I fear the packaging is just a bit annoying. I think I will recommend extracted chapters to colleagues, but counsel caution with regard to the whole thing.

This was both the most popular non-fiction book on my unread shelf, and the most popular unread book that I acquired last year. Next on both lists is The Cuckoo’s Egg, by Cliff Stoll.

Country of Pils, Jagr and Havel Finally Shortens Unwieldy Name

It’s Czechia!
(tags: czechrepublic )

How the Clinton America sees isn’t the Clinton colleagues know

One of Ezra Klein’s brilliant pieces.
(tags: uspolitics )

UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

Confirmed now.
(tags: ukpolitics eu research )

Q

Interview with an aid official.
(tags: southsudan )

Why I’ll Be Leaving Post-Brexit Britain

Very sad. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu race )

Hungary built a razor-wire fence to keep refugees out. Now, it’s desperate for migrants

Grim irony.
(tags: migration hungary )

The Rise of Theresa May and the Decline of British Politics

Brilliant summary from the New Yorker.
(tags: ukpolitics )

Impact of Brexit on the PR Industry

My colleague James thinks we’ll benefit; probably right.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Second frame of third chapter:

I had been quite a fan of the earlier volumes in this series, but my interest dropped off around 2012, when I bought this but never go around to reading it. Anyway, it’ the usual dense narrative, interspersed with parentheses which in general I found more interesting – there’s a very disturbing child-abuse one illustrated by Bryan Talbot, there’s a great First World War one illustrated by Gary Erskine; but the main plot has our unfortunate hero increasingly involved with the sinister Pullman and the mysterious Leviathan to a point where I found I didn;t care as much as I would have liked to.

This was my top unread comic in English. Next on that list (actually, ahead of it if I’d tallied promptly) is Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot.

Precedent and learning Martian

You can do it!
(tags: psychology Life )

More than 300 dead in South Sudan fighting

Very sad. Unhappy fifth birthday. #fb
(tags: southsudan )

Why I renounced my US citizenship (Hint: it’s not because I’m avoiding taxes!)

Though tax is an issue! #fb
(tags: uspolitics )

Čay v tea

The words for “tea” in European languages.
(tags: languages )

Which country has the best banknote?

Step forward, New Zealand!
(tags: newzealand art )

Game of Thrones unfolds in Brussels over Juncker’s iron throne

Quotes me.
(tags: eu )

It's really striking that two years ago, it was impossible to find enough comics from 1938 to populate the Retro Hugo category – we gave a Special Committee Award to Superman instead – but this year there is a wealth of 1940 material to choose from. Having said that, there's not in fact a lot of variety; with one exception, the 1941 Retro Hugo finalists are origin stories of costumed crime-fighters. This at least reduces the problem of comparing apples with oranges, but it does mean that we are essentially voting on the same story told differently four times.

I did not nominate in this category. None of the entries is in the Hugo packet, but most can be found fairly easily if you look for them (taps side of nose).

6) No Award. Any of these is a good representation of where comics were in 1940. None of them is perfect, but none is deeply flawed either.

5) The Origin of the Spirit, by Will Eisner
Second panel of third page:

I didn't really warm to The Spirit. I found him a bit smug and complacent, and his drugs and technology work just as far as the plot needs them to. NB that the next story in The Spirit: A Celebration of 75 years ends with him triumphantly spanking a teenage girl, an image that is used for the frontispiece. That story is not on the ballot; if it were I'd be putting it below No Award.

4) The Spectre: “The Spectre”/”The Spectre Strikes!”, by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily
Second panel of third page (from first of two instalments):

I feel a bit more sympathetic to The Spectre than I do to The Spirit because The Spectre is actually dead, and has to manage relations with his girlfriend as well as Fighting Crime. He doesn't do a very good job of it though (the girlfriend bit, I mean).

3) Captain Marvel: “Introducing Captain Marvel” by Bill Parker and C. C. Beck
Second panel of third page:

I found myself warming to this much more – total wish fulfillment for the readers who can imagine transforming into superheroes at the simple uttering of the word "Shazam", and saving America from a plot to Destroy Radio. Glorious nonsense.

2) Batman #1, by Bob Kane.
Second panel of third chapter:

I am assuming that we are meant to consider the collected early Batman stories "The Joker", "Professor Hugo Strange and the Monsters", "The Cat" and "The Joker Returns" here. I did not immediately warm to them, but on reflection I can see that Kane put a lot of effort into the world-building, in comparison with the other three origin stories. And the fact that Batman has a sidekick makes the relationship at the top more interesting too. I am sure it will win.

1) Flash Gordon: “The Ice Kingdom of Mongo” by Alex Raymond and Don Moore
Second panel of third installment:

This is a very different kettle of fish; rather than traditional comics style, each panel has a detailed picture plus half a dozen lines of explanatory prose. The story concerns Flash Gordon and team crashing in the Ice Kingdom of Frigia (which is on the planet of Mongo), ruled by the skimpily dressed Princess Fria. Much of the story involves palace intrigues, including a love triangle between Princess Fria, Dale Arden and Flash; this varies from interesting to cringeworthy. But I liked the fact that the women are not generally peril monkeys and at one point team up together to rescue Flash from durance vile. There is the odd plot inconsistency, no doubt due to the difficulty of keeping names and details straight in a story that took thirteen months to publish, but for scale, ambition and (mostly) execution, I am giving it my vote.

For the 2016 Hugos fpr Best Graphic Story, my nominations were:

The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, by Sydney Padua
Sex Criminals, Vol. 2: Two Worlds, One Cop, by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
Saga vol 5, by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples
The Sandman: Overture, by Neil Gaiman, J.H. Williams III, Dave Stewart and Todd Klein

The File 770 straw poll found the following as the most popular nominees in this category among contributors:

The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud (15)
The Sandman: Overture, by Neil Gaiman and J.H. Williams III (9)
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, by Sydney Padua (9)
Ms. Marvel, Vol. 2: Generation Why, by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, and Jake Wyatt (8)
Saga, Vol. 5, by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples (8)
The Autumnlands, Vol. 1: Tooth and Claw, by Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Dewey (7)
Bitch Planet, Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine, by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro (6)
Nimona, by Noelle Stevenson (5)
Lumberjanes, Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy, by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Shannon Watters, and Brooke A. Allen (4)
Rat Queens 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles of N’rygoth, by Kurtis J. Wiebe, Roc Upchurch, and Stjepan Šejić (4)

I nominated four of the top five of these, a rare case of my tastes coinciding closely with the File 770 spread. However, the final ballot includes only one of these stories. The other finalists did not get a single vote between them from File 770 readers. The slate made a clean sweep here.

My own vote will be as follows:

6) Full Frontal Nerdity by Aaron Williams
Second panel of third 2015 installment:

It's not entirely clear what section of this webcomic is intended to be eligible. I started reading from the first episode published in 2015, and lost interest after the first few; the jokes are not particularly funny, the characters unengaging, and the whole thing a bit too focussed on tabletop gaming as the entirety of life.

5) Erin Dies Alone, by Grey Carter and Cory Rydell
Second panel of third chapter (confusingly numbered Chapter 4):

Another webcomic, which started in 2015. Here I read the first three story arcs (numbered Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 4), starting from March 2015 and finishing in November. There is a cute girl and a cute raccoon, and they discover that computer games have their own reality which intersects with ours. I didn't much care for the setting and I thought the emotional pacing was badly off in places. But it has its moments.

4) Invisible Republic Vol 1, by Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman
Second frame of third chapter (rotated):

Carefully drawn, but unevenly plotted story of revolution in an oppressive society, set on a distant moon of a distant planet (but really could have been at any time and almost any place). I did wonder why the main male character didn't simply shave off his beard to avoid being recognised.

3) The Divine, by Boaz Lavie, Asaf Hanuka and Tomer Hanuka
Second frame of third page:

Story of an American military contractor in an Asian conflict zone who discovers that dragons are real. Improbable plot twist at the end involving his pregnant wife, and somewhat stereotyped characters among both Americans and Asians. But shows promise.

2) The Sandman: Overture, by Neil Gaiman and J.H. Williams III
Second text frame of third chapter:

As reported earlier in the year, I really enjoyed this and I nominated it myself. But having read four slated finalists that were nothing like as good as the four other graphic stories which I nominated, I'm angry that we have basically been given one person's choice of what should be on the ballot rather than the collective voice of fans, and a choice between one good work and four poor ones is no choice at all. I am invoking the Foster principle and voting:

1) No Award.
It is simply an outrage that The Sculptor and The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, and probably two other worthy nominees, were kept off the ballot by the slaters. Filling the ballot with complete crap is unacceptable, as voters demonstrated last year; but putting just one good nominee on the ballot also removes choice and competition, and most of all fun, from the process. So I am not going to lend my vote to their enterprise.

As I've said before, let's hope for better times.

2016 Hugo Finalist Review Roundup

I’ve done this in past years, but very glad that JJ has done it this year.
(tags: sf hugos )

An essay I bought online was so bad I want a refund – but the firm won’t pay up

Serves you right. #fb
(tags: academe )

After ‘Brexit’ Vote, Immigrants Feel a Town Turn Against Them

Life in Boston, Lincs. “It was a mistake to come here.” #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics migration )

How It Feels To Be Trolled By 40,000 Brexiters On Facebook

I should be interested to know if anyone was similarly troubled by Remainers. #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics socialmedia )

Andrea Leadsom apologises to Theresa May over ‘motherhood’ remark

Pressure from those nasty journalists. Let’s hope her next job keeps her away from that kind of stress.
(tags: ukpolitics )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

True to his father’s instruction, on that fateful evening so many ages past, Peter had the flute named Frost with him. It sat in its small carrying case on the truck bench’s seat beside him. This was a new case, of course, made of modern high-impact plastic and reinforced steel. The original leather case had worn away long ago, as had many successors since. But Frost remained unchanged by time. It looked as new today as when he first saw it, and probably the same as when fabled Jorg first carved it.

I read most of Bill Willingham’s Fables series of graphic stories back in 2008-11 when they were getting Hugo nominations, but rather lost interest after the big battle between our heroes and their enemy was resolved in Volume 11 (of at least 19). This however is a spinoff prose novel, explaining the tortuous relationships between Peter Piper, Bo Peep and Peter’s evil brother Max, coming to a gruesome climax in medieval Hamelin with echoes through to the present day, where fairy tale characters are living under cover in New York – am I right in thinking that there’s a recent TV series with a similar premise?

It’s gorgeously illustrated, clever and well-written, but not especially so, and while it’s supposedly standalone with respect to the comics, I think they do crucially reinforce each other. So I can’t recommend this to those who haven’t tried (or don’t want to try) the graphic stories it’s rooted in.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2011. Next on that list is The Last Theorem, by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl.

I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

Forensic and searing.
(tags: race uspolitics )

I have facial blindness so I’m crap at networking, but let’s talk anyway

Matthew on prosapagnosia.
(tags: networking )

After the love has gone

Esra fears that time is running out for a Cyprus settlement.
(tags: cyprus )

Mysterious Circumstances

Death of a Sherlock Holmes fan – old news, but a peculiar pancake.
(tags: death crime )

Polish passports enquiries from Brits rise by 10,000 per cent after Brexit vote

No further comment needed.
(tags: migration ukpolitics )

Lush cosmetics chain to move much of its production overseas in wake of Brexit

‘Mark Constantine, who co-founded the cosmetics giant with his wife Margaret 21 years ago, said the referendum result had signalled to staff from overseas that they’re “not welcome and not wanted by people in Poole” – where 58 per cent voted to leave the EU.’
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

As a British Indian and Ukip adviser, I believed in Brexit – but what it’s done to the country has broken my heart

Honest at least.
(tags: eu ukpolitics race )

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
The Algebra of Ice, by Lloyd Rose

Last books finished
The Divine, by Boaz Lavie, Asaf Hanuka and Tomer Hanuka
Invisible Republic, Vol 1, by Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel in Cartoons, by Jeff Kinney
Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter

Last week’s audios
[Torchwood] Uncanny Valley, by David Llewellyn
[Torchwood] More Than This, by Guy Adams

Next books
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
The Secret History of Science Fiction, ed. James Patrick Kelly
Dead Romance, by Lawrence Miles

Britain’s Moment of Truth

Excellent piece by my former colleague Daniel Gros.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Neuroscientists say multitasking literally drains the energy reserves of your brain

Sorry, what did you say? I was thinking of something else.
(tags: psychology work )

Life after fighting – Rosi’s Blog

On retiring from MMA.
(tags: Life )

Dear Summer

Why @tochitruestory hates it.
(tags: race uspolitics )

Second referendum probably legally required

Hmm. But surely Brexit legislation will repeal 2011 Act?
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You

Comprehensive.
(tags: psychology )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Before he set out for Cologne, Morton spoke to Sir Oliver Passmore on the telephone to ask for any further news or indication of what to expect. Passmore chose his words with care. He had been choosing his words with care for most of his life. 'We're not absolutely sure what Kramer intends,' Passmore told him. 'He may try to do what his predecessor, Jacques Delors did, when he was President-designate back in 1985.'

This is another real political treasure of times past, a thriller written by none less than the father of Boris Johnson, himself a former MEP and Commission official who is now one of the best known environmentalists on the political Right in England. The book was written in 1987, set in 1989; I must have read it in the mid-90s, when I was politically engaged in Belfast, though I missed the 1998 film starring John Hurt. (This is the second book I have read recently which was made into a film starring John Hurt.)

It's a rather moral story. James Morton, a Tory MP with a second-rate job but a first-rate majority, is sent by Margaret Thatcher to Brussels as the new British Commissioner. He struggles with the unglamorous position of Commissioner for Industry, but finds himself in the middle of a massive scandal involving the chemical industry and environmental damage, facing off against vested interests in Germany, Britain and the Commission itself, and also in a personal dilemma between his American wife and his Portuguese colleague. The ending turns out rather ambiguous, with good and bad guys both claiming their share of the spoils.

It's surprising, thirty years on, to remember that there was a time when a Conservative writer – a member of the Johnson family, no less – was capable of nuanced commentary about European politics (though I fear not about the Irish). I appreciate now, more than I did before I came to Belgium, the touches of local colour – Morton and his wife move to Rhode-St-Génèse, which was where we first lived when we moved here in 1999; La Maison du Cygne and Comme Chez Soi are still reputedly the best restaurants in town; there is still something of an old-guard clubbish elite around the Place Royale/Sablon where occasionally I get invited to stand outside and look in the window (one missing venue is the Egmont Palace). It's an account by someone who knows and loves the town.

Though much has also changed. There are now 28 Commissioners rather than 12; more importantly, Morton's successor, the Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, has quasi-judicial powers to prevent dubious mergers without anyone else's permission, rather than needing to wage the political campaign that Morton gets tied up in. Also, as I commented in my last review, it's impossible to imagine a romance between two high-profile political figures going unnoticed in the age of the 24 hour news cycle and the Internet.

Still, it's worth getting hold of, if you can, to take your mind back to the late 1980s, a time which, though we did not realise it, was a much more innocent age than our own.